Yours is the first email I opened this morning. I was surprised to see your name since I had forgotten about the piece I had submitted a year ago. Time does fly.

I appreciate your suggested revisions and invitation to re-submit the work once I have made the revisions. I can tell that you spent a lot of time analyzing my efforts.

I’m afraid, however, that I can’t make the changes you suggest. Nevertheless I feel obligated to compensate you for your time.

It is to that end that I took your name to Rebecca. I showed her your suggestions and she said that your name would be introduced at the next gathering of her coven. She asked if I had any suggestions for revisions to your life. I said I did and that she might want to take notes.

I said I thought it might be best to have your organs rot one organ at a time. I added, however, that while your organs rot slowly in series, your heart should remain strong so you can die at a leisurely pace. We don’t want to rush this.

She said that could be arranged although it was an unusual request. In similar cases in dispatching someone who has grievously insulted another, usually the insulted party wants the insulter eliminated immediately. I’m unusual, she said, in that respect.

I told her I didn’t want to be heartless and have you die before you have a chance to put your affairs in order. And I reminded her not to inflict cancer on your pancreas too early because medicine has no certain cure for that. In short order, cancer of the pancreas usually means lights out.

I suggested she start with your gall bladder and move on to your kidneys and then your lungs and then your brain. That will keep the doctors busy while you waste away. I suggested she save your pancreas for last.

I also asked her to let me know when your pancreas becomes involved so I can make plane reservations to come and say good-bye.

In the meantime, may your next issue be stillborn. No reason to make it different from the last.

You see the oddest things at Christmastime in America. The bigger the city, the stranger the sights. I was driving downtown to buy gifts for the family and enjoying bouquets of beautiful people bundled in big coats and colorful scarves clustered on corners, shopping in good cheer amid petals of snow dancing in the sun.

One of them, however, a beautiful young lady, had stopped to take issue with an old woman in a shawl picketing Planned Parenthood. The old woman was riding on a motor scooter designed for the elderly. She held a sign bigger than she was and kept motoring back and forth as resolute as my aunt who had been renowned for protesting any injustice. Saving seals in the Antarctic had been very important to her.

On this day, however, the beautiful young lady who had taken issue with the old woman was livid and screaming. She marched behind the motor scooter and yelled at the old woman who appeared oblivious to all the commotion. Maybe she was deaf, I thought, like my aunt. That can be an advantage at a time like this.

The letters on the sign were huge but I couldn’t read them so I drove around the block and found a spot at the curb.

It turned out the sign said, “What might have happened if Mary of Nazareth had been pro-choice?” Now I understood why the young lady was ranting and raving and why the old woman kept motoring to and fro. At Christmastime in America people get excited, more so than usual.

When I got home I hid my packages and told my wife at supper what I had seen. I also told her that if Mary had chosen otherwise, I wouldn’t have had to go shopping today. That’s obvious, she said.

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Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His poetry and fiction have appeared in a variety of publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/.

Poetry by priests? Who gives it more than mock attention? We read their poems, yes, author first, then the title, finally the verse itself. Not much, except for Hopkins. We wait for Rome, you see, to give us in addition to its saints one more decent poet. A sot once said “When things get bad enough, you will see a Celt, armed with a quiver of poems, ride flaming out of the hills, soaring over the lakes, wearing a rainbow for a Roman collar.” Things are bad enough right now by half. We need to hear his gallop soon.

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Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His poetry and fiction have appeared in a variety of publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his early poems, written between 1965 and 1971, can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/.

She is almost upon me I look up and I tell her I have sand, sea, skies, laughs, all paid for and nothing nothing at all to do.

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Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His poetry and fiction have appeared in a variety of publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his early poems, written between 1965 and 1971, can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/.

Perhaps when I’m better I’ll discover you aren’t married, after all, and I should be better by Spring.

On that day I’ll walk down Michigan Avenue and up again along the Lake, my back to the wind, facing you, my black raincoat buttoned to the neck, my collar a castle wall around my crew cut growing in.

Do you remember the first hour? I sat there unshaven, a Martian drummed from his planet, ordered never to return.

With your legs crossed, you smoked the longest cigarette and blinked like a child when I said, “I’m distracted by your knee.”

The first six months you smoked four cigarettes a session as I prayed out my litany of escapades, each detail etched perfectly in place.

The day we finally changed chairs and I became the patient and you the doctor, you knew that I didn’t know where I had been, where I was then, and even though my hair had begun to grow in how far I’d have to go before I could begin.

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Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His poetry and fiction have appeared in a variety of publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his early poems, written between 1965 and 1971, can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/.